


Like An Echo Far Away

by SugarMagic



Series: This Heart of Mine Beat Loud and Fast [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alpha Centauri (Good Omens), First Kiss, Good Omens Kink Meme, Love Confessions, M/M, Other, Outer Space, Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21837133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarMagic/pseuds/SugarMagic
Summary: With the world saved, Aziraphale and Crowley enjoy their new-found freedom by dragging their dinner out long past what is respectable and then sharing a bit of a starlit stroll. Quite literally, in fact
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: This Heart of Mine Beat Loud and Fast [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844806
Comments: 9
Kudos: 120
Collections: Good Omens Kink Meme





	Like An Echo Far Away

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for the following prompt on the kink meme:  
> "My kink is straight up romance.
> 
> You know that dinner at the end? With 'A Nightinggale Sang' playing over the top of that perfect ending scene?
> 
> The lyrics go:  
> "The streets of town were paved with stars  
> It was such a romantic affair  
> And as we kissed and said goodnight  
> A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square"
> 
> I want that first kiss. The world is saved, they have a nice dinner, things turn romantic and walking home later that evening, under the stars, they can finally be together.
> 
> Make me SOB with how romantic it is. All the feels <333 (can end in smut if you want but I really don't mind if there's a fade to black or something, I just want that starlit kiss more than anything)"
> 
> Many thanks to [dreamsofspike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofspike/pseuds/dreamsofspike) for providing beta reading and saving this fic from all of its inherent errors. <3 Very much appreciated.

The meal goes on for so long after their toast to the World that they begin to strain the patience of their waiters. Lunch turns into dinner, and Crowley’s subtle miracle is the only reason they’re still here. The impeccability of the service is now maintained only by strict professionalism, not by the good humor of the staff. (Aziraphale’s reputation for leaving outrageous tips even by the standards of the Ritz probably helps as well, though.) But if anything is off about the service, neither angel nor demon can be bothered to notice, so deeply engrossed in one another’s company are they. 

Crowley interjects another order for an appetizer or a dessert or a side salad or whatever, it really doesn’t matter to him. As long as there’s food on the table, they’ve got a reason to stay, leaning close together to relate another story of their shared history, bits they’d been apart for, details of the near-miss with the world ending business that was just a day before yesterday, all of it. Really, it’s a lot to go over, even ignoring the end-of-the-world piece. Crowley feels like he could listen to Aziraphale’s stories forever, and suddenly for the first time in 6,000 years of friendship, it feels like they have that kind of time. 

“It must have been Gabriel,” Aziraphale muses. 

He’s just wrapped up a recollection of what Uriel and Sandalphon said to him as they dragged Crowley-as-Aziraphale off towards divine punishment. 

“Adding a Sound of Music reference? Honestly. ‘Renegade angels all tied up with strings,’ indeed. As if the original weren’t hackneyed enough as it is. But he’s never been terribly cultured, has he? Not much of a patron of the arts, Gabriel. At least not _quality_ arts.” 

Aziraphale tips his champagne glass steeply to finish it off, and Crowley can’t hold back his satisfied smirk. As Aziraphale goes, insults don’t get much more cutting than that. It’s thrilling to see him so free, liberal with his language in a way he’s never been in front of Crowley, maybe in a way he never has been, period. This might be a first, actually, knowing how fussy and careful he is. 

Was. Has been forced to be. 

But not anymore. (Or so Crowley dares hope, cautiously, desperately.)

“That would imply that he stood in front of them and gave the instruction to say that. Can you imagine it?” Aziraphale continues. 

Crowley leans over to generously refill the angel’s champagne flute and makes vague assenting noises. 

“They probably all thought it was wonderfully clever. Sandalphon must have eaten it up. You know, I have my suspicions about them… the _two of them_ , I mean.” He starts on this champagne flute too, raising his eyebrows with significance. 

“What, you think He Who Serves The Crown might be in bed with the organizational leadership?” 

“With the leadership?” Aziraphale asks. “No. They’re of the same Heavenly Sphere. Equals in Heaven’s eyes, purportedly. Sandalphon has nothing to gain. It’s just that Gabriel is so much more eager to strut his authority around like a spring cock that one could scarcely know it.” Then he leans in across the table, voice falling to a conspiratorial range. “But the in bed bit, yes, that’s precisely what I think.” 

Crowley explodes into sharp laughter. It’s loud and obnoxious and it gets them looks from other guests, but Crowley can hardly be arsed to care. He’s watching Aziraphale laugh along with him while trying not to, trying to muffle his angelic smile behind closed lips, and Crowley’s chest is alight with satisfaction. 

Let the mortals stare at him, if they want to. Honestly, what the Heaven do these people want from him? The joy of it would be too much for any demon to stoically withstand, especially after all this time, especially when it’s them. The thrill of Aziraphale’s newfound irreverent freedom, the cautious bliss of his own… The generous blend of the two is more potent than the alcohol in their glasses. Everything feels possible for them now, at least from Crowley’s perch up here on Cloud Nine. It’s such a sudden reversal from yesterday’s impending doom of Never Seeing Him Again that he’s blessed near giddy with it. 

Aziraphale’s hand is flat on the table next to his. Their chairs have nudged nearer and nearer to each other over the course of the evening, and it would be so easy to lay his own hand over it. He could gather up his perfectly manicured fingers and map the topography of his knuckles with sweeping expeditions of his thumb, like the angel did to him on the bus. He wants to. Damn, does he want to. Instead, Crowley flattens his own hand on the tablecloth a safe distance away and considers the nature of risk and reward. 

They don’t touch. Or, they haven’t, hardly at all in all this time, save an occasional business-like handshake to mark the start of an important venture for the Arrangement. Rarely, they’ll brush accidentally. (When that happens, a thrill will go through Crowley that makes his wings shudder, and Aziraphale will apologize even when it’s undeniably (intentionally) Crowley’s fault, and then the moment will be gone.) That’s the extent of it, though. Nothing intentional. No contact meant to savor. 

Crowley has come close to touches outside those margins plenty of times, of course he has. He could hardly help it, what with the way he has been pacing restless circles around Aziraphale all the time, looping around his personal space as if to coil him tight. He didn’t even know what he was doing with that himself for a good two thousand years, before he understood how wretchedly in love he is. 

But to actually reach out and put his hands on the angel... that’s always felt a step too far, no matter how much he may want it. The touches they’ve just begun to share wouldn’t have happened at all if Aziraphale hadn’t stepped over the precipice first, Crowley given license only when Aziraphale caught his fingers and squeezed them, sinking into the bus seat as if that's just something they do. 

At the time, Crowley stared straight ahead, too exhausted and too wary of startling Aziraphale out of this unprecedented boldness to even look at him. Instead, he fixed his eyes strictly on the back of the driver’s head and spent the entire ride inferring every expression he might find on the angel’s face if only he were to look. He mentally flicked through references of his memories of Aziraphale in Rome, in Jerusalem, in Sussex, and on, until Aziraphale wordlessly tipped his head onto Crowley’s shoulder and settled there, saying nothing at all. His cracking resistance shattered into thousands of pieces all at once then, sharp and everywhere, and Crowley turned to press his face into alabaster curls and breathed deep, because he couldn’t anymore.

Now he has Aziraphale with him under no pretense other than an unspoken understanding of “I want to be near you,” and for the first time, that’s justification enough. Crowley wants to keep it that way. He hungers for it so badly. He wants Aziraphale to be his without excuse, without hastily-strung-together rationale. No plausible deniability, no back up plan. Just the two of them together through eternity, against the world, against morality. Heaven and Hell came for them, and now they have nothing to fear, and Crowley just wants to be able to hold his fucking hand. 

Bless it, he thinks. They faced the end of the world together; They can face Crowley daring this. At worst, things will turn a bit awkward and they’ll go their separate ways after hours spent together, and Crowley will have been incredibly successful at hoarding this treasured wash of warmth in his chest. At best, he’ll be able to feel the angel’s fingers knit between his own again, skim the tender flesh of Aziraphale’s wrist with his thumb, trace a little snake pattern there, and he’ll have opened the avenue to making that tender touch of their hands as normal as Aziraphale had played it off to be on the bus. 

Sometimes a demon needs to know when to show some brass.

Crowley advances by centimeters. His hand scoots across the tablecloth at a glacial pace. It freezes when Aziraphale’s focus is on him, and starts journeying again whenever he takes a bite of something or sips his champagne. It’s a long, perilous journey. But finally, the tips of his fingers are trailing against the side of Aziraphale’s pinky, delicate and barely there. (But enough to send a shiver up Crowley’s spine, regardless.) 

Aziraphale, for his part, freezes, eyes flashing to Crowley’s face. Then he looks down and clears his throat.

“I suppose we had best be getting on.”

The warmth in Crowley’s chest chills back to ice in an instant. Too far, too fast. He’s been letting himself get greedy. For all the happy progress of the evening, Crowley feels his mood sour, just a bit. He’s gotten ahead of himself. Again.

Aziraphale scoots his chair out to get up. Crowley sags back into his and lets his arm flop off the table to dangle at his side. Well, this has been a very good run. Best yet. But time to cut his losses, he supposes. 

“One last stop before we turn in for the evening?” Aziraphale asks.

Never mind, uncut the losses. He might still be in this. 

“Where, that stuck-up pastry shop on Wardour? They’ve got those lemon cupcakes you like, the ones with the pink stuff inside. Saw ‘em in the window on my way out. We could pick up a box. Open up a red back at your place.”

“That’s- Well, that does sound lovely, to be honest, but it’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

Aziraphale falls silent, suddenly very interested in righting the buttons on his cuff. Crowley waits, and waits, and Aziraphale fiddles with his buttons, and finally Crowley tips over the knife’s edge of anxious waiting and makes an impatient gesture at the air. 

“And what you did have in mind _was_...?” 

Aziraphale’s smile is tight. “Best to let it speak for itself, I suppose.” 

Nervous. He’s nervous. 

Crowley hasn’t spent the last six centuries studying Aziraphale’s face to not have perfect recognition of his expressions, and right now he’s reading apprehension as clear as the text in one of the angel’s books. Crowley’s gears start cranking to work out exactly why “nervous” would be what Aziraphale is feeling just now, but he’s not too optimistic about it being unrelated to an aborted hand-holding attempt a few minutes ago. Before he makes much progress working it out, though, Aziraphale gives himself a fortifying little pat on the thighs and offers an open, utterly unnecessary hand to help Crowley up from his chair. “Shall we, my dear?”

Crowley looks at Aziraphale’s upturned palm, then at his face, and then at his hand again. He can’t help but be wary of whatever’s happening here, and even moreso of how he’s going to fuck this up. But Aziraphale is offering his hand, so what choice does he have, really? None at all, if it’s what Aziraphale wants. Crowley sniffs, shrugs, and takes it. 

Aziraphale’s nervousness is eclipsed by a sudden smile, supernova-bright. His fingers tangle with Crowley’s just the way he wanted them to, only at Aziraphale’s own pace this time. A gentle urging pulls him from the chair. Their palms press together. His grip is strong and sure. Crowley tries to match it with a squeeze, and Aziraphale squeezes back without hesitation. 

“Off we go, then,” Aziraphale says. He takes a step forward, and the stride blurs the two of them forty-trillion kilometers away from the Ritz.

There’s a heartbeat of vertigo as their corporeal bodies are superpositioned onto another plane, and then they’re rushing through spacetime together, atoms outpaced by the essence of them and mass left behind form. Mere moments pass before they’re stepping back into physicality with nothing under their feet. They are suspended weightless in the universe’s void for a moment before the miraculous nature of things catches up with them: Reality aligns to their perceptions, and then it’s more like standing on a glass floor. 

“Here we are,” Aziraphale notes, and fiddles with his bow-tie with one hand. The other hand is still being held tight by Crowley, and Aziraphale is holding it tight in return. 

Swirls of fine cosmic dust are aglow in pinks and greens and golds from the light of Crowley’s creations. The wide-open mouth of eternity stretches on forever all around them and beneath them and above them, and everywhere else, there are stars, stars, stars. And at the centerpiece, two great bright celestial bodies dance slow, caught in each other’s pull. These suns have been circling one another for millions of years, independent and whole alone, but inexorably entwined and brighter, more breathtaking together. 

“... Alpha Centauri?” 

Crowley’s voice doesn’t meet him even halfway on the confidence he wanted to exude. He sounds breathless, vulnerable, and against his wishes, it matches how he feels.

“Indeed. You wanted to go, didn’t you? Before… all that?” 

“Ngh,” Crowley manages, taken by the stars and dust, the celestial bodies he remembers the meticulous process of making: Each element carefully paired, aligned, and brought into orbit until they formed something more, something new, something the universe had never seen before. Last time Crowley was here, he was an angel himself, single mindedly doing God’s work in the perpetual ecstasy of serving. He swallows, remembers himself, and the angel beside him. “I wanted to go _with you_ ,” he clarifies to Aziraphale. “I didn’t- The where didn’t actually matter, I only wanted to go just-” 

He cuts himself off before he can say ‘Just in case each of our sides brought us to heel and my only hope of seeing you again would be on the battlefield, at the end of your sword. Yours, not mine, mine would be cast down. I wouldn’t lift a finger to hurt you, I’d much rather be destroyed than ever bring you harm.’ He doesn’t say all that because Aziraphale knows it. It’s another of the million unspoken truths hanging in the air between them. 

Aziraphale slips his hand out of Crowley’s to wring them as a pair at his front. “The where shouldn’t have mattered to me, either. It didn’t. But I couldn’t let go of-” Aziraphale huffs a frustrated breath. At himself, Crowley realizes. He recognizes the signs of self-disgust well enough. He’s never managed to stop living in it. “Well. Never mind all that.” Aziraphale smiles politely, as he does when uncomfortable. “Ruminating on that certainly is not what I mean for us to do out here.” 

Crowley wonders what it was Aziraphale intended to say. It occurs to him that he should wile it out of him, seed him with doubt over the benefits of keeping his true thoughts concealed. Get Aziraphale to tell him what precisely it was that he couldn’t let go of. (Not that he doesn’t have a hunch already.) But for once, perhaps for the first time, Crowley can feel the acceleration pressing him back, and recognizes this as the sensation of _going too fast_. He can’t rush them through this thing they’re stumbling through, whatever it may be. The warm tenderness that has decorated Crowley’s insides all evening feels fragile and ancient and rare. It feels like a precious irreplaceable treasure that needs to be handled carefully. 

Crowley can be careful. He can. 

Crowley collects himself and offers Aziraphale his arm. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”

Aziraphale beams up at him and loops his arm through Crowley’s. He feels so hot pressed up close against Crowley’s side compared to the vacuum of space, and the snake in him has to struggle against a need to coil him in tight and keep him. It was the fashion for friends to walk so very close back in the 19th century, and Crowley suspected that Aziraphale missed it. He missed it himself, when Aziraphale was the one at his side. Tucked against him, he can lead Aziraphale vaguely around like the aimless sightseers they are. They’re in no rush. There is no point of reference to guess the time so deep into the cosmos, and at his guess, the two of them can each feel the slant towards the stillness of forever. 

Arm in arm, it is far less terrifying of a notion. 

So they explore. 

There are far more planets in Alpha Centauri than the humans have discovered so far, and that’s probably for the best. Dozens of Earth-like prototype worlds would probably only concern them. But Crowley and Aziraphale only worry themselves with the concerns of humans when it fits into their own plans, and it certainly doesn’t right now. So they put it out of their minds and make for the first world that humans have observed, a compact stoney one circling too close to the smaller star. 

It’s got a name, probably; humans love giving names to things. For Crowley, though, he knows it wordlessly, far more holistically, recalled through the hazy memory of making it instead. He recalls the days and years of work done before the notion of days or years existed. He recalls the slow progress of it, the serene rhythm of angels doing God’s work. Yes, Crowley remembers. 

Aziraphale is meanwhile looking about with warmth and enthusiasm, similar to the way he shines from within when humans talk to him about their kids. 

It makes Crowley want to fidget.

“Tadah,” Crowley says flatly once they’re moored, gesturing at the pock-marked landscape of a simple Earth-sized world. “More empty than I remember it, if I’m honest. Lot more craters, too.” 

“Rather lovely all the same,” Aziraphale offers, almost casually, as if he were remarking on the SoHo weather instead of the landscape of an extraterrestrial world. Crowley only shrugs. Having Aziraphale looking over his prior works is almost flustering. It was from another point in his existence, from a timeless age when he was an entirely different creature. It shouldn’t make his insides hot to hear Aziraphale’s mild praise. His stomach shouldn’t swoop from seeing the angel look upon his works and find them worthy of a kind word. 

“Probably should have given it an atmosphere, though. Does wonders for protecting the surface, that.” It’s a meaningless statement, just words to fill the air. Aziraphale is cheerfully observing, looking left and right with his steps paced perfectly to keep himself and Crowley in time. He’s always been good at that: meeting Crowley halfway, when he has a mind to. 

They don’t linger on the planet long. Crowley is too restless and he doesn’t have it in him to dedicate the attention to feigning normalcy when the one he loves and has loved is so close, so attentive, so near. So _his_ , after all this time. 

He catches that last thought as it forms and yanks his mind backwards like an unruly dog on a chain. His? Hardly. They had a long dinner after a long day. They are having a nice time sightseeing in space. So what? That doesn’t change anything. That doesn’t mean… 

But even in his own head, he’s having trouble convincing himself not to hope. Aziraphale has walked through Hell for him, quite literally. Crowley said, “Our side,” and Aziraphale took his hand on the bus. They each burned for comfort in that moment, and it was natural, easy, soothing one another through humble physical contact, still leaning over the abyss as they were then. Now there is no danger, no reason for his hand to return to twine around Aziraphale’s other than- other than the vague understanding that, even with the world put back together much as it was, there is something that has changed. 

“This bit took ages,” Crowley comments as they pass into the swirl of a circumstellar disc. “There’s a lot of specifics involved in getting the dust to behave itself right. Didn’t know if it’d all keep together at the time, to be honest.” Aziraphale’s thumb begins tracing a wide, slow ellipse against Crowley’s palm, mapping its own interpretation of the system’s orbital path. It’s more than distracting, more than flustering, and Crowley isn’t going to manage controlled, aloof silence for anything, so he just keeps blabbering on. 

“The whole system was sort of a proof of concept, I suppose. Stars pursuing each other, balancing each other out, nourishing a world. Can’t have both like this, though, not if you want the system to have life in it. Seemed like a good idea at the time, letting beings always have the comfort of light and vision. No long nights like we have on Earth. But it makes for too much traffic. Can’t risk a star skimming too close to a planet and scorching everything into little black ash piles ‘cause some Power skimps on the pathing check. Too hot, besides. Heaven was still sorting the whole physics thing out back then, and we...” 

Crowley’s voice dies away as he turns his head. Aziraphale is gazing at him, eyes sparkling with the light of these naked stars that Crowley channeled his very soul into creating. 

“What?” Crowley asks, voice small. 

“You love this place.” It’s a simple observation, and a true one. “I can feel it,” Aziraphale adds before Crowley can deny anything, and despite himself, Crowley snorts. 

“It’s not the _place_ , angel. Keep up.” 

The admission is out of him before he can think better of it, and an immediate flash freeze of horror advects up to fill the empty space it leaves behind. Not even his demure angel with all his intentional misunderstandings and careful selective hearing can miss the weight of a line like that. 

Crowley panics. No other word for it. Brainlessly, he snaps his fingers, and suddenly they find themselves on a small grey moon. A fleece blanket spreads itself over the barren ground, topped with a little wicker picnic basket. The fabric on the lid matches the blanket. It’s tartan. His miracle, not Aziraphale’s. 

What in Heaven is becoming of him? He calls the _angel_ sentimental. Aziraphale says a single offhand sentence about them going on a picnic 52 years ago, and he whips this out now? After all but admitting he’s in love? He didn’t even consciously will it. He didn’t even think. His soul just saw the opportunity and sent him merrily skipping along towards utterly humiliating himself. 

“Picnic,” he says, as stupid as anything, but Aziraphale, merciful angel, grins beautiful and pure all the same. Crowley’s heart is stuttering like mad when he takes Crowley’s hand to keep his balance and eases himself onto the blanket, and then it positively thunders with the realization that it was nothing more than an excuse to touch him again. (He’s going to nail down the handholding after all.) Aziraphale is looking sidelong at Crowley with bemused delight, unable to hide his smile, as incapable of stifling joy now as ever. As for Crowley, Crowley’s mind is hurtling along at millions of light-years per hour, trying to figure out how he can undo this. 

Aziraphale is relishing this, though. At least he’s happy. Any embarrassment Crowley will suffer later on self-reflection is more than worth it, if that’s the case. He joins Aziraphale on the blanket as the angel lifts the lid of the basket and reaches in with a gratified, melodious note of “Oh! Crowley, these look positively scrumptious.” 

Crowley makes a noise and peers inside to see just what in Heaven he’s miracled up. Turns out it’s those lemon cupcakes with pink stuff inside, the ones from that stuck-up pastry shop on Wardour. 

Aziraphale sets the cupcake box on the blanket and returns to the basket to draw out a pair wine glasses and a long, tall bottle of alcohol. The label says Talisker, but the color is wrong for malt whiskey, and Crowley is exceedingly grateful when it pours out as a pale Sauvignon blanc instead. He watches the wine slosh mild waves against the sides of the glasses as Aziraphale tips the bottle to pour for the both of them, dazed. It takes him mortifyingly long to take the stem when Aziraphale presses it into his hand. 

Aziraphale scoots closer, steadying with an arm braced very close to Crowley’s back. They’re not touching but it’s close enough for Crowley to feel his body heat again, and it’s all he can think about as Aziraphale raises his glass. 

“To us,” his angel offers. “To you and I.”

Aziraphale tinks their glasses together after a long pause of Crowley not moving a muscle. Aziraphale takes a modest sip, and then Crowley’s body works starts working again, so he does the sensible thing and downs the glass in one. 

“To us,” he returns, but it comes out sort of choked. Aziraphale smiles anyway and refills his glass. The only sound is the desperate war march of Crowley’s heartbeat, internal and loud, and he hangs suspended in that silence until Aziraphale’s eyes choose a distant star to fix on as an anchor. 

“I really am terribly sorry, my dear. About how I treated you, when you asked me to come here with you at the bandstand. I couldn’t… I could never have forgiven myself if I hadn’t at least tried…”

The angel’s eyes dim with what must be regret. He busies himself with the unenthusiastic selection of a cupcake, and the melancholy ache of it isn’t what Crowley had wanted at all. Crowley couldn’t care less about how he’s been treated when Aziraphale is looking so hollowed out. 

“Was a stupid idea, anyway,” Crowley provides. “There really is fuck-all to do out here. Not much better than eternity, to be honest. And I’m glad. That we stayed. Obviously. It worked out, I just- Ngk. The rest of time was on the line for both of us, and I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know if-“

His voice fades, leaving “if I’d ever see you again, and if I could survive that,” hanging in the air unsaid. He doesn’t know what he would have done. Aziraphale’s hand settles over Crowley’s where it’s knotted into a tight fist on the blanket, and oh, he doesn’t remember doing that, not at all. This moon’s dusty surface will always have this little scar of bunched-up soil carved into it from when Crowley anxiously twisted up their picnic blanket in his hands. 

“I know. I was terrified too. If we’re being honest about it.” 

“No. Angel. You don’t know. You’re the only- You’re-“ Crowley’s throat is tightening around his second confession of the evening, unable to give voice to the truth that Aziraphale is the sole important thing in Crowley’s existence, his reason for continuing, his source of life, his bright sun. Aziraphale sets down his cupcake to gather Crowley’s hands, one in each of his own. He holds them and watches Crowley’s golden eyes blink fast against the swell of emotion pooling in them. He’ll savage himself later if he fucking _cries_. 

“I _know_ , darling. I do. I tried to pretend not to, for the longest time, and I feel terribly foolish about that now, I can tell you. Terribly foolish. I think I’ve known for far longer than I care to admit. But,” he says after a pause, “We’re here now, aren’t we?” Then, quickly, “No, I’m sorry. That’s not at all what I intended to say. A moment to collect my thoughts, if you please.” 

Crowley untangles his hands to blitz through two more glasses of wine, poured fast and drunk faster. His nerves won’t take the stillness, otherwise. He can’t handle the waiting. He smooths a wrinkle in the blanket and pretends to watch the stars but sees only the angel beside him from the corner of his eye, the point of brightness that outshines anything he could look at out there. 

At length, Aziraphale starts again. 

“When it came down to it, I wasn’t prepared to acknowledge Heaven’s intentions for the Earth. It was difficult to reconcile… Of course I’ve known about Armagedon from the beginning, and I looked forward to it like the rest. There was a time when I was truly a holy servant. At the start, defying Heaven was unthinkable to me. Why would I, when their will was my will? But things changed. There was more to the world than I knew, more to creation than I knew. And now the attitudes of my fellow angels only alarm me.” He pauses, idly twisting the angel-wing ring on his fifth finger. “God’s love for humanity does not shine through them anymore. If it ever did. And God’s love can seem like a bit of a mixed message at times, even right from the source, if you’re wearing a human’s boots.” 

“If you’re in their shoes,” Crowley corrects automatically.

“Isn’t that rather what I said?” 

Crowley waves the distraction away with a grimace and makes a matching sound. “I know what you mean, though. About the other angels. Bunch of sanctimonious pricks at the best of times.” 

Aziraphale opens his mouth, pauses, and closes it again. It’s an automatic reply being reconsidered before it’s said, and it’s so foreign, so strange to see Aziraphale not jumping to the defense of the Host. 

“You know, I must confess, there have been moments when I’ve felt the same. Even before the end of the world, I struggled to feel at ease among them. But I was more disturbed by the lack of mercy they showed when Michael and the others came for me. I’d managed to not think of it, not really, until the end was upon us all. But it became rather impossible to ignore at that moment.” 

Crowley makes a sympathetic sound. He has been frustrated well enough by Aziraphale’s second-hand telling of the chills of unease he’d sometimes feel while receiving Heaven’s divine command. The bitter anger at another natural disaster or celestial purge was both of theirs to feel, but his alone to express. Aziraphale had always pushed it down, swallowed his opinions and his feelings and his needs. Crowley’s most craved achievement would be to tempt Aziraphale into being himself. 

He’s never quite managed it, though, so he has done the next best thing: he’s become the pressure valve for Aziraphale’s strangled release. Crowley would bitch about Heaven, throwing out the pettiest criticisms whenever he could, and Aziraphale would make token efforts to defend it. Those rote scripts suited him fine. If he could give his angel a little peace in doing so, he could listen to Aziraphale’s weak justifications for days. Had done, actually. Whatever it took to help Aziraphale understand that he wasn’t wrong to wonder, Crowley was willing to do. Not that Heaven would agree with him on that, about Aziraphale’s silent questioning not being wrong. And that was really the crux of things, wasn’t it? 

”And if they thought so little of God’s own creations,” Aziraphale mused on, “then what could they possibly think of me? Changed, as I am? I’m not the angel I was when I first set foot on the wall of the Garden. I must admit to that. My time on Earth has influenced me. You have influenced me, my dear.” 

A chill goes through him, and a wayward wave of affection right after it. This is something Crowley has known and feared for a very long time. Aziraphale is an angel, and Crowley is a creature too wretched to be loved by God ever again. He is jealous and covetous, and he could only comfort himself in his inferiority with the understanding that, at least by Heaven’s standards, there’s always been something a little bit wrong with Aziraphale. They’re the same in that regard. 

Maybe it’s natural that they choose each other’s company, no matter how reluctantly at first. It’s not as if Crowley was forcing his company on Aziraphale. He was Aziraphale’s choice, too, in the end. Crowley could feel it. So who was he to override Aziraphale’s own wishes? Demons are free will advocates of sorts, if one looks at it a certain way. But still, still, there were flashes of sudden terror sometimes, a grim recognition of terminality: Aziraphale should not be poisoned by him. The fear wasn’t strong enough to keep Crowley away for good, but it darkened his mind on the worst days. 

“And do you know,” Aziraphale continued, “as the panic set in at the end, I couldn’t help but think very often of all the things I would lose, and all the things in the World that I have loved. Every time I thought it through, there you were, perched at the top of the pile.” He makes a helpless little gesture and smiles self-consciously. “Of course I knew on a cerebral level that you could never follow me back to Heaven. But emotionally, in my soul, that was my expectation. I felt as if you’d be there with me, somehow. Or we’d be together on Earth, at the very least.” 

Crowley says nothing. There can’t be a misunderstanding recognized too late to get his heart back after it’s flown out of his mouth. He can’t risk a wrong assumption. He _can’t_. In a rush, he finds himself suddenly dizzy. It has nothing to do with the disorientation of zero gravity, but it’s still only thousands of years of practice that saves him from reaching out to Aziraphale to steady himself. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale’s voice is so small, so unsure. “You must know that I- that my feelings for you aren’t what one could call strictly professional.”

Crowley makes a hoarse, meaningless sound at his angel, and he barely manages that much. He has always carried a desperate spark of hope within him - a wish that if he was persistent, if he was unrelenting, that this moment would happen someday. He has tried to make it into a faith, something he knows for a fact inside his soul. In truth, he was never so confident. But he returns to his old doctrine now. It’s now, or it’s a thousand years in the future, he tells himself, and he knows he might be lying to himself, but God, he’s trying. This might be the moment. If Crowley can keep still and quiet enough, he might not scare it off this time. 

“Yuh?” At least his meaningless sound has a vowel in it this time. Well done, him. 

“Yes. Oh, I hope this isn’t a terrible shock for you… but my dear, you should be aware.” Aziraphale closes his eyes and his face takes on a determined tension. He takes a long, airless breath in through his nose, and his stormcloud eyes open again. “Crowley,” he says again. “I must confess that I do believe I am very much in love with you.” Aziraphale pauses, then smiles wistfully. “No,” he corrects. “That is not something that I believe. It is something that I know. I know that I am in love with you, Crowley. I have been in love with you for the better part of the last century.”

The black ruined soot of Crowley’s soul feels as if it’s untarnishing inside of him. He thought he knew the nature of the stars, thought he knew the thresholds of brilliance a supernova can cusp, but all of it feels menial when compared to the luminous explosion in his chest. It’s radiant against a planet’s lifetime spent in fear, eons of terror at the notion of being the only one between them who loved this hard. 

He wasn’t. It wasn’t just him. 

The larger of the suns is cusping above the horizon, and Crowley squints against the glare of it, too bright, too much with the way all of his dearest hopes are actualizing on the spot at the same time. But Aziraphale’s wings open, and the right is lifted just so, held to block the harshness of the sunlight from Crowley’s eyes. It illuminates the white of his feathers, making them illuminate in cream-golden from the filtered light. Doubt is trying to pick a path across his mind, but it finds no footing beneath the benevolent shelter that is the presence of Aziraphale’s wings.

“I love you,” Aziraphale repeats, and his voice is so fond. It washes over Crowley like a baptism, and he shudders, overcome by the intensity of Aziraphale’s grace. All the love he’s carried inside himself for so long feels uncontainable now, spilling over the edges of him to pool around him like an overfilled chalice. Aziraphale’s thumbs are tracing over his cheekbones, tender and reverent and adoring. “I love you. My darling. My dearest. Crowley. I love you. You are my one and only love.” 

Crowley’s heart shouldn’t be pumping in the first place, but it’s really gone ahead and doubled down on that. He reaches for Aziraphale before he realizes he’s doing it, his hand skimming up his forearm, tracing the shape of his ethereal form, and the two of them shudder, each full of mutual sensation. 

He doesn’t have words for what he’s experiencing just now. Poetry is Aziraphale’s thing. His best chance at conveying it is to return to the evening’s unfamiliar and simple touches, the tender, reverent kind that he’s never dared before. If his love transfers even by half, his angel might be staggered with it. But at least at last he’ll finally understand. 

He reaches his elbow and draws him in slowly, giving his angel plenty of time to put a hand up to stop him if he wants to. But Aziraphale leans into him instead, until they’re chest to chest, and Crowley’s arms are wrapped around his back. Crowley inhales the moment into his being, feels Aziraphale’s fingers curl into his shirt, feels his snowy hair against his cheek, and the heavenly bodies before them slowly churn through their routes as they always have. 

Holding him is supposed to be enough. Aziraphale’s mere company had sustained him for centuries, so clutching Aziraphale’s back and nosing against his neck should have been more than enough for a good long time. But then, in a sudden rush, it isn’t anymore. Having his arm looped around Aziraphale is insufficient, after so many years of aspiring to that very thing. Aziraphale loves him. Aziraphale told him he loves him here among the stars. They’re in love. His thoughts stall on the idea of it, reviewing it again and again on repeat.

He tips Aziraphale’s face towards him with a suggestion of touch along his jaw. Aziraphale’s eyes sparkle with starlight as he looks up at him. His cheeks are pinkening with the heat of the close suns glowing warm against his skin, and maybe with something else as well, and Crowley leans into him, not by conscious choice, but on the captivation of a charmed snake. He’s too close to see the flutter of Aziraphale’s eyes closing, but he can feel the feathering of blonde eyelashes against his cheeks. Aziraphale’s lips part; he hears the delicate sound of it, and his angel is waiting for him for once. He cradles the base of Aziraphale’s skull with infinite tenderness to guide where he can, make sure they meet in the middle, and Crowley closes the space between them, finally, at last. 

The kiss is simple, a basic brushing of lips like untested youths. It shouldn’t feel so sweet, so much like all he has ever desired, because it’s only one kiss and not truly the birth of a new solar system like it feels, but it does. It does. Crowley thought he couldn’t climb higher, couldn’t feel more than he was feeling already and make it through the other side, he’d thought that hours ago, but Aziraphale’s lips shift under his and he feels a wet nudge, his tongue, fuck, and he has to wrench himself away with a gasp to keep himself from ravaging him. 

He draws the back of his hand over his mouth and tries to scramble together all the scraps of his self-control. It’s a hard-won fight. 

“Love you too, angel,” he says, so bleeding obvious he almost forgot to mention it. Still, Aziraphale sighs, dreamy. He tucks himself back against Crowley like he belongs there. Like his arms are where he fits.

They watch the star system and bask in the afterglow of their kiss for a long time. Eventually, Aziraphale draws back enough to look at him, a tad sheepish. 

“I suppose this was all a bit silly, wasn’t it? Dragging you all this way to tell you something I could have said in the restaurant.”

“Shut up. No. It was perfect. Wouldn’t change a thing.” Aziraphale opens his mouth to surely say something demuring, but Crowley talks over him. “I mean it, angel. Perfect.” 

And then Aziraphale beams. “Wonderful to hear it.” He extracts himself from Crowley’s hold, and Crowley is loath to release him, until he realizes Aziraphale has woven their fingers back together, and doesn’t seem to be letting go any time soon. “And thank you for showing me this place. It’s simply lovely. I do believe I can actually spot your personal influence,” he praises. “Perhaps we should visit more often.”

“A bit dull, though, isn’t it? Not a bookshop in sight.”

“Nonsense. Not with such charming company.” Aziraphale is sneaking him coy little smiles again, the same pleased closed-mouth grin he flashed in the restaurant when Crowley fondly called him a bastard. Trying to hide them, as if he hasn’t just been kissing Crowley with that same angelic mouth. 

The seal’s broken now, and Crowley can already feel how much of a problem it’s going to be for his self-control. A lightning bolt of want strikes through him. He lunges for Aziraphale’s upturned mouth, reeling him in by his topcoat to crush their lips together. Aziraphale makes a startled noise that turns into sort of a chuckle and then into something lower, a long note of satisfaction that sets something predatory and demanding alight in Crowley’s guts. He barely manages to untangle his hand from Aziraphale’s undershirt long enough to snap his fingers. 

They manage to keep their kiss even as they’re hurtling through the universe. Their mouths are growing frantic against each other, and they arrive back on Earth with a gasp against a hot, gliding tongue belonging to one of them or the other. They corporate back on the planet that has united them, onto the bottom stair of Aziraphale’s bookshop, back in the World that they both love. 

“Shall I see you to your door, then?” The pitch of Crowley’s voice is low and quiet, and near pleading. 

“That would be lovely.” 

They take the stairs at a pace dictated by two people dedicating their attention solely to each, and Crowley kisses him again when they reach the top. “Good night, angel,” he mumbles against his lips, but neither has the will to pull away. Instead, Aziraphale’s hands come gliding up his back, drawing Crowley in close. His nose tucks into his neck and Crowley is wrapped in his angel, and he wants nothing more than this. 

“Perhaps you’d like to come in…?” Aziraphale asks against Crowley’s collarbone. Crowley grunts a noise and staggers backwards, reaching an arm behind himself to fumble the doorknob open. They fall through the doorway like they’ve fallen through everything else when it comes to one another, same as it’s ever been since the start of time, and Crowley’s thinks of ineffability as he crowds Aziraphale up against the other side of it. Above them, Alpha Centauri seems to twinkle, their own good omen to auspice this night: the first evening of the rest of their lives.


End file.
